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NEW YORK — Twinkies don’t last forever, but they’ll have more staying power than most people
remember when they return to shelves next week.

Hostess Brands LLC said the spongy yellow cakes will have a shelf life of 45 days when they
start hitting shelves again on Monday. That’s nearly three weeks longer than the 26 days the
previous owner had stated as the shelf life for Twinkies.

Hostess spokeswoman Hannah Arnold said the change to extend the shelf life was actually made by
the old company that went bankrupt, with the longer-lasting cakes first hitting shelves on Nov. 1
of last year.

But the old company went out of business and stopped production just weeks after that, meaning
the Twinkies most people are familiar with had the shorter lifespan.

Arnold declined to say what changes were made to extend the shelf life, calling it proprietary
information.

The
New York Post reported last week that Hostess will start freezing some of its cakes to
extend their shelf life. That means that Twinkies will be delivered to stores frozen so retailers
can stamp their own expiration dates on the cakes.

Arnold said in a statement that “a select number of retail customers” representing about 10
percent of its distribution made the request for frozen products. She declined to say which
retailers requested the frozen Twinkies.

Hostess shuttered its factories in November, after years of management turmoil and failure to
reach a contract agreement with its second-biggest union. Its brands were sold off in chunks to
different buyers; Twinkies and other Hostess cakes were purchased by Apollo Global Management and
Metropoulos & Co.

As to whether freezing will affect the flavor, Arnold said, “Any suggestion that Hostess is
changing the integrity of the iconic snack cakes consumers have loved is completely untrue.”